filmmaking

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Two weeks ago I upgraded my telephony gear to the new iPhone 18 Pro Max (shown at right, displaying the Amazon Kindle app with my book Keeping the Tryst: pretty cool aye?).  The last time I bought a smartphone, it was early winter 2021 when I got the iPhone 12.  I had been mighty pleased with that one, with the exception that from the start it seemed to get low on battery too quickly.

(The previous phone replaces the iPhone 6 that I got a month before me and my dog’s epic adventure across America that kicked off in late spring of 2016.  I guess getting a new phone every five years or so is a good pattern to have.)

Battery life is not a problem with the 18.  I’m using it regularly at my new job, for taking photos and filing reports etc.  The battery charge on the ...

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On Independence Day some friends asked if I wanted to join them at the theater to see the new Steven Spielberg movie Disclosure Day.  I went with them and we agreed afterward that it’s a great movie!  Not Spielberg’s best but it’s definitely tapping into “old school Spielberg” that a lot of us remember from our youth, with a dash of the “mature Spielberg” who has been with us since Schindler’s List.

That is how I gauge our greatest living filmmaker.  There is the Steven Spielberg that I met at the Boy Scout Jamboree in 1989: the “big kid” who was as giddy as a schoolboy, dancing around in his Scout uniform.  That’s the man who brought us E.T. and Indiana Jones and Jaws and the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park.  He had a childlike twinkle in his eye and we were fortunate to have him.
Then Spielberg went
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The very sad news came in the past few days that Marcia Lucas, the incredibly talented film editor who made her mark with the original Star Wars and many other movies, has passed away at the age of 80.

 

From what I’ve heard over the years, Marcia came into the production of Star Wars after her then-husband George Lucas had shown a cut of the movie to his friends.  The near unanimous verdict (Steven Spielberg was the only one in the room who said he liked it) was that George had a disaster on his hands.  That first cut was a narrative nightmare.
And then Marcia swooped in and said that she would fix it.
And she did.
Among other things she made it so that Princess Leia was much more action-oriented than she had been first perceived to be.  That was a huge thing that made a
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Things like this usually doesn’t go past my notice.  Guess I’ve been so occupied with other stuff lately.  But yesterday was the anniversary of something very special and I need to make a note of it…

May 25th, 2025 is the twentieth anniversary of my… or rather I should say our… first motion picture, Forcery.  An almost hour-long parody of Rob Reiner’s film adaption of the Stephen King novel Misery.  Forcery depicts Star Wars creator George Lucas, hot off of finishing the script for Episode III, being rescued from certain death by his “number one fan” Frannie Filks.  It’s not long before Lucas, who used to create Star Wars for a living, is now making it to stay alive.

This was an idea that hit me about a week and a half before 9/11.  Indeed, I started writing the screenplay (though I had no idea HOW ...

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He passed away today at the age of 78.

The impact that this man had on the cinema arts can not be emphasized nearly enough.  Everything he did, be it surreal or more traditional storytelling, he made his own.  David Lynch showed us more than most what the camera was capable of doing when guided by a mind willing to step away from the safe path.  He saw the guardrails and crashed through anyway.

I first came upon Lynch’s work when I was a high school sophomore.  I had seen the promos for Twin Peaks and they intrigued me terribly.  So I did something I rarely did and still rarely do: I watched its two-hour television premiere.  Twin Peaks sucked me in hard and never let go.  And it was the gateway drug for more of Lynch’s unique vision.

Admittedly, I will never be able to confess ever “getting” ...

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The sad word came late yesterday evening that Dav Gerrells, who owned and operated Cafe 99 in Reidsville, North Carolina for many years, passed away after a brief illness over the weekend.  I used to eat at Cafe 99 when I still lived in Reidsville and Dav always made me feel welcome.  The man was a thoroughly great guy and he was an amazing cook.

Early in 2007 I entered a filmmaking competition for the Fox television reality series On The Lot.  Entrants had to make a short film and submit it for the opportunity to be a contestant on the show.  Friends and family encouraged me to take a swing at it.  It was a very trying and strenuous two weeks from initial concept to finished product but in the end “Schrödinger’s Bedroom” was in the can and shipped off on DVD to Hollywood.

We filmed the ...

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It was on May 14th, 1944 that a little boy was born in Modesto, California.  Growing up he was a restless young man, with no clear idea of what he wanted to do with his life.  He finally settled on being a race car driver.  But a near-fatal car crash a few days before graduating high school put a damper on that idea.

Our hero eventually decided he wanted to go to college.  He enrolled in a junior college and studied everything from anthropology to sociology to literature.  While there he began experimenting with filmmaking.  He then ended up at University of Southern California, choosing to continue his studies in cinematography.  And he discovered that he enjoyed it, a lot.  A series of student films followed, and many of them gained notice for their groundbreaking and breathtaking visuals.

The young lad graduated from college and tried to enlist in ...

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This is… THE greatest thing that I have seen in a very long time.  These kids are… wow.  They are amazing!  They were able to pull off what a lot of us thirty and forty years ago were only able to dream of doing.  I know my best friend Chad and I used to plan out our own Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies.  How when we grew up we would be the next Lucas and Spielberg.  I like to think a little of that carried over to when we were making our films fifteen or so years ago.  Still a bit of childhood magic left.

But these kids, the young men and women of Oliver Springs Elementary School in Van Buren, Arkansas were not content to wait that long.  No, they went all out and they did it now.  It took them two years of fundraising and planning ...

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Actually I’ve had it for a very long time now (I think 2006).  I just haven’t done anything with it until this week…

Some friends suggested that I “increase marketability”.  So I’m putting myself out there in a way I might have not done before.  In assembling this I’ve become a bit astounded at all the experiences that have been racked up over the past decade or two.  In spite of having manic depression – or maybe because of it – I’ve wound up with a pretty impressive skills-set and collaborative history.  I also uploaded and included a portfolio of some of my video work, bits of which have never been seen by a wide audience until now (I’m particularly fond of the “Wacky Dead” clip).

Anyway, if you want to see the professional side of me, here’s my LinkedIn page.

 

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